Measurement of Contact Forces On A Kayak Ergometer With A Sliding Footrest 8211 Seat Complex
Measurement of Contact Forces On A Kayak Ergometer With A Sliding Footrest 8211 Seat Complex
Measurement of Contact Forces On A Kayak Ergometer With A Sliding Footrest 8211 Seat Complex
DOI 10.1007/s12283-008-0011-2
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Kayak–Athlete–Paddle system. The change in velocity of Usually, the kinematics in the local reference frame is
this system depends on the difference between the blade reproduced (see Begon et al. 2003 and Lamb 1989 for
force and the total resistance (i.e. aerodynamic and hydro- kayaking and rowing examples). The main problem is
dynamic drag). The forces applied to the footrest and to the about the reproduction of contact forces on ergometer
seat are internal forces of this system. The relationship of compared to the outdoor activity. On water, the difference
these internal forces with the performance is not obvious. in magnitude between the blade force and the total resis-
The kayaker can (1) keep his lower limbs motionless by tance creates change in the Kayak–Athlete–Paddle linear
applying forces to the footrest that counterbalance the blade momentum. Conventional kayaking ergometers were con-
force or (2) use pedalling motions that cause a longitudinal structed with static footrest and seat. The paddle tips force
pelvis rotation (Logan and Holt 1985). The lower limb does not produce acceleration of the system but creates
actions, added to those of the trunk and the upper limbs, extra forces on the footrest or the seat (Begon and Colloud
increase the stroke length. A stroke technique that uses 2007). As for rowing (Elliot et al. 2001, Colloud et al.
pelvis and trunk rotations around a vertical axis seems to be 2006) a solution could be to use a sliding trolley to
an adequate co-ordination to improve the performance in reproduce the on-water dynamics. The purpose of the
kayaking. However, in both cases, differences in force present study was to provide accurate quantitative infor-
distribution at the contact points of the athlete with the mation about both kinematics and contact forces when
kayak can produce the same kinematics because the forces kayaking on an ergometer with a sliding trolley.
applied to the footrest and the seat can have opposite sign.
A performance assessment based on mechanical quan-
tities requires simultaneous kinematics and kinetics data 2 Materials and methods
collection. To our knowledge, the instrumentation neces-
sary for this complete investigation suitable for water and The instrumented system enabled the measure of the an-
laboratory tests has not yet been developed. Kinematics tero-posterior forces applied to the footrest, the seat and the
investigations were initiated using ergometers. Mann and paddle. It disassociated forces applied to the left and right
Kearney (1980) and Campagna et al. (1982) analysed the sides, thus opening the way to the measurement of asym-
path of the wrist, elbow and shoulder in the sagittal plane. metric actions of the draw and thrust segments. A new
However, pelvis, trunk and upper limbs kinematics can not kayaking ergometer was constructed based on the Etindus
be assumed to be planar. Accurate measurement of the (French) kayak ergometer in which an air brake simulated
three-dimensional (3D) kinematics is difficult, specifically the water drag on the blade. The flywheel was driven by
on-water (Sanders and Kendal 1992b) as this requires at two self-winding inextensible ropes linked to a paddle
least two calibrated cameras and a large filming area. In (1.64 m long). This ergometer differed from conventional
spite of these difficulties, Kendal and Sanders (1992, 1992a) kayaking ergometers by having a trolley that slid forward
reported on-water 3D descriptive analyses over a full stroke. and backward along a static frame (Fig. 1). The trolley
On-water kinematics acquisition over successive cycles of included the footrest and the seat (Fig. 2). A bungee cord
the lower limbs, which are hidden by the cockpit of the linked the trolley to the rear part of the frame. The set-up
kayak, remains challenging for the future. The scientific possibilities offered by the trolley (e.g. height of the feet
literature reports very few analyses of athletes’ contact
forces. The main reasons concern complexity in the mea-
Z
surement of the blade forces (Aitken and Neal 1992) and the
need of construction of robust and waterproof instrumen-
tation. Petrone et al. (1998) designed a four-component X
Trolley
dynamometric footrest and a six-component dynamometric Y
r
Fl
Table 2 Root mean square difference (N) calculated according to subject, system and trial phases
Subjects Gender Mass (kg) Static Trolley Trolley–Athlete–Paddle
Starting Steady Static Starting Steady
1 M 82.1 14 21 23 16 29 56
2 M 74.5 20 23 30 25 24 35
3 M 80.0 22 22 40 12 32 59
4 F 63.6 19 17 23 19 26 37
5 M 88.0 15 31 39 19 30 50
6 F 62.8 8 20 17 16 27 32
7 M 75.6 20 21 32 17 27 39
8 M 86.9 20 29 38 13 25 35
9 M 90.0 29 30 33 21 34 59
10 M 78.4 43 32 40 25 34 46
Mean 21 ± 10 25 ± 5 32 ± 8 18 ± 4 29 ± 4 45 ± 11
Forces ranges sum 138 ± 133 757 ± 214 3063 ± 1716 57 ± 19 334 ± 62 431 ± 114
The sum of the range of forces gives information about the magnitude of external forces without considering direction
system of equations is over-determined. Thus, the mea- instrumentation. To obtain the {T} dynamics, only one
surement accuracy was assessed using Newton’s second reflective marker and five force sensors were necessary,
law: the mechanical equality between the net force acting whereas the paddle tip forces, the bungee cord tension and
P
on the multibody system ( Fext/S) and the time-derivative the segment inertial parameters were involved in the
of the linear momentum of the multibody system S ðP_ S ¼ {TAP} dynamics calculation. The friction between the
MS AS Þ in an inertial reference frame: trolley and the frame as well as the air resistance were
X X assumed to be zero. Newton’s second law, applied to both
Fext=S ¼ MS AS ¼ m i ai ð1Þ
i
systems in the direction of the anteroposterior axis, yields
respectively:
where mi and ai are the mass and acceleration of the centre
of mass of the ith part (i.e. body segment, paddle or FFx left þ FFx right þ FSx left þ FSx right þ FBx ¼ mT axT ð2Þ
trolley). Segment linear acceleration was obtained from the FPx left þ FPx right þ FBx ¼ mT axT þ mA axA þ mP axP ð3Þ
time histories of the segment centre of mass position by
double differentiation with a 5-point numerical To validate the instrumentation, all residual forces (E)
differentiator. Previous to this, raw kinematics data were were evaluated (Kingma et al. 1996) by:
filtered by a bi-directional second order Butterworth filter X X
(cut-off frequency 6 Hz). According to the ergometer Fext=S þ E ¼ m i ai ð4Þ
i
instrumentation, two mechanical systems were defined
(Fig. 3): Trolley {T} and Trolley–Athlete–Paddle {TAP} The root mean square of E (RMSe) gave a value
and used to validate the different elements of the representing the residual forces over the known time
Measurement of contact forces on a kayak ergometer with a sliding footrest–seat complex 71
Fig. 4 Net force and time- [N] Static phase Starting phase Stable phase
derivative of linear momentum 200
100 Trolley-Athlete-Paddle
for the three phases (static,
starting and steady paddling) 0
and for both systems: Trolley -100
and Trolley–Athlete–Paddle for -200
trial of subject 2 200
100 Trolley
0
-100 Net force
Time derivative linear momentum
-200
time
periods: static, starting and steady phases. RMSe was Right side Left side
compared to the inaccuracy of the time-derivative of the
Pushing
linear momentum. The motion analysis accuracy was
600
determined by means of a wand with two markers placed
1. Footrest [N]
400
at a known distance (345 mm) moved throughout the
measurement volume. RMSe values between the three 200
Table 3 Peak values (min, max) of the contact forces (N) measured This is also confirmed by previous Motion Capture studies
by the sensors at the footrest, seat, bungee cord and paddle for each with a kinematic analysis of shoulder–pelvis rotation as
subject during the steady paddling phase
reported in Petrone et al. (2006). Nevertheless, the RMSe
Subjects Footrest Seat Bungee Paddle remained lower than the cinematographic inaccuracy for all
subjects, systems and trial phases, with only one exception.
1 [-15, 294] [-94, 301] [67, 93] [0, 273]
The results of this experimental study were thus satisfac-
2 [-32, 521] [17, 357] [67, 98] [0, 292]
tory and validated the instrumentation.
3 [-42, 815] [-98, 588] [63, 95] [0, 309]
The validation of the sliding ergometer gave information
4 [-16, 479] [-10, 325] [54, 79] [0, 181]
on contact forces for a population of elite athletes. Our
5 [-36, 429] [-116, 439] [59, 93] [0, 305]
values were noticeably different from those measured on
6 [-25, 322] [-60, 302] [58, 69] [0, 164]
water by Petrone et al. (1998). In their study, normal forces
7 [-28, 424] [-53, 231] [66, 97] [0, 292]
applied to the footrest ranged from -152 to 444 N and
8 [14, 412] [0, 351] [67, 94] [0, 313]
from -128 to 6 N for the seat at a stroke rate of 90 spm.
9 [-9, 497] [-41, 265] [70, 104] [0, 331]
The difference in the range of forces could be explained by
10 [-11, 469] [-34, 355] [64, 98] [0, 284] the athletes’ different levels (4 versus 15 h training per
Except for the bungee cord, the peak values are for both the left and week), by the tilt of the footrest and probably by the
right sides mechanism of the two ergometers (fixed versus sliding seat
and footrest complex).
RMSe is a global indicator of the accuracy, curve analysis The force applied to the footrest was higher for the draw
(Fig. 4) gave complementary information about systematic foot and close to zero for the thrust foot. The athletes who
or random differences. The analysis of the static phase for used straps around the feet [S2, S3, S5] applied pulling
both systems highlighted an underestimated net force, actions to the footrest and the seat. These forces allowed
whilst the time-derivative of the linear momentum fluctu- pelvis rotation and compensated for the moment of the
ated about the theoretical statics value of 0 N. The rope paddle tip force. The compression force measured on the
orientations inaccuracy, which gave a random error in FxP, seat indicated that the athletes applied extra forces to
did not explain the systematic error computed for the net the footrest. The athletes seemed to anticipate the paddle
force measurement; consequently, the friction between tip force in order to avoid their knees collapsing when the
trolley and frame was not negligible. Since the residual paddle force increased sharply. Hence an increase in the
force did not significantly increase for {T}, there should be paddle force decreased only the seat force and the athlete
more agreement with Newton’s second law—at low and was able to continue the pelvis rotation. The paddle force
high stroke rates—if friction was considered or reduced was slightly positive before the blade–water contact. On
using linear ball (or cross roller) bearing slides. the ergometer, the flywheel torque depends mainly on the
By contrast, the RMSe increased significantly for {TAP} paddle tip velocity and acceleration. In flatwater paddling,
during the trial (static, starting and steady phases). Other the blade should enter into the water with a velocity to
errors came from the time-derivative of the linear offset the velocity of the boat. This paddle velocity created
momentum of the multibody system, the numerical time- paddle force just before the time corresponding to blade–
derivation and the anthropometric model being both sour- water contact. The elevation threshold (/0) defining the
ces of error. In spite of signal processing, the noise was water plane is coherent. Moreover, the ropes were self-
amplified by the calculation of acceleration. Further errors winding to keep them in tension. Due to this tension, the
originated from the estimation of segment mass and centre paddle tip force was always positive. Therefore, it will be
of mass position. The trunk viewed as a single segment important for the estimation of the propulsion to assert a
(defined by the greater trochanter and the acromion), is not null force outside the water phase. This description of
suitable for further analysis of kayaking movement. The average curves must be moderated in regard to the large
athlete’s trunk was bent forwards and rotated from left to confidence intervals, in particularly for FxF and FxS.
right. In addition, the shoulder joint contributed to extend Although each athlete reproduced precisely the contact
the paddle entry as far as possible. Thus, considering the force time histories for each cycle, there was a strong
trunk as a single segment does not sufficiently account for variability between athletes, the main difference being the
spine and sternoclavicular joint mobilities. Hatze (1980), magnitude of the forces.
Plagenhoef et al. (1983) and Yeadon (1990) proposed Although the athletes in the present study were of
trunk models divided into four parts (abdomino-thorax, international level, they produced different force patterns.
abdomino-pelvis and two shoulders) or three parts (thorax, In competition, they paddled at similar boat velocities,
abdomen and pelvis). These models could give a better except for the women (S4 and S6). The inter-subject var-
correspondence between forces and kinematical values. iability of the blade force was mainly explained by the
Measurement of contact forces on a kayak ergometer with a sliding footrest–seat complex 73
difference in the subjects’ masses. The relationship Begon M, Mancini G, Lacouture P, Durand F (2003) Comparison of
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